


need not be spoken

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mutual Support, Platonic Relationships, Relationship Study, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27514945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Some think it strange, that Cassandra, as a Lady, is waited on by a manservant and not a lady’s maid.
Relationships: Cassandra de Rolo & Desmond Otham
Comments: 18
Kudos: 52





	need not be spoken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chamerion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chamerion/gifts).



> A late birthday present to the ever-wonderful Chamerion, without whom I might not have half as many thoughts and feelings about Cassandra de Rolo as I have. I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> Thanks to Strandshaper and SecondStarOnTheLeft for acting as betas.
> 
> While I love Percy very much he never actually outright tells Desmond "I'm sorry I permanently maimed you". He does get talked over quite a bit during the Desmond sections of Musician's Nostalgia, and he does make apologetic gestures in Desmond's general direction, but Percy never actually _properly_ apologises for it.
> 
> But he does write to tell Cass that Desmond is to be given employment.

Something she likes about having Desmond as a manservant is that his touch is unlike anyone else’s.

It’s terrible of her, she knows. It was hardly Desmond’s own choice that caused that - it was her brother’s anger and her brother’s hellish weapon and her brother’s desire for vengeance.

Desmond, she knows, still fears her brother.

(Sometimes, so does she.)

But Desmond is, nonetheless, one of a small cadre of servants she dares to trust. One of a very few people she dares let herself feel safe with. She does not flinch from his steadying hand on her arm or at her back as she does Archibald’s or Yennen’s. Does not fear showing her tiredness to him as she does to her brother.

(Her lungs never healed right, after the arrows. In winter the cold touches her more deeply than it should, when she exerts herself she’s more tired than light exercise should warrant. When she’s been sat at her desk for hours on end, her breath slowing and slowing until she might as well be dead, a dizzy spell hits if she so much as looks up too quickly.)

(Desmond, ever-attentive, is always there.)

It’s not eerie. Not as it could be. She knows what it is to be startled or frightened - so does Desmond. Tylieri was of Lord Briarwood’s ilk, both capable of unnatural silence as they moved, letting them sneak up and startle them at any time.

But Desmond is quiet and present and somehow not frightening at all. His maimed hand is like a claw and for that dissimilarity to anyone else, he is Safe.

Cass knows she should feel guiltier for taking comfort in that. Then again, she thinks at times that her brother could stand to feel more guilt over what he did to Desmond: to her knowledge, he has not apologised.

* * *

Desmond prefers Cassandra to her brother. He used to half-fear her, hearing stories, and she looks enough like her brother to be a reminder. Same long nose, same blue eyes, same heavy dark eyebrows.

But if he’s learned anything working for her, it’s that Cassandra’s brows weigh more with tiredness and worry than anger or wrath.

Cassandra, for all her seeming confidence, is riddled with guilt and uncertainty as much as anyone - even if, perhaps, he is one of the only ones she allows to see it.

* * *

Some think it strange, that Cassandra, as a Lady, is waited on by a manservant and not a lady’s maid or suchlike. Truly, were she a Lady Dowager or the wife of a Lord, perhaps it would be, but Percy has abdicated his position as true heir leaving her in his place and as ruler of Whitestone then by the old charter she is it’s  _ Lord _ for all she is addressed as  _ Lady. _

And a Lord has a manservant, not a lady’s maid.

Honestly, sometimes Cassandra despairs at the propriety and politicking required of her class that so small and strange a rule still affects things. Other times, she’s glad. In a strange way, Desmond is a comfort and when dealing with officials - the presence of someone familiar, someone she doesn’t fear or worry over the opinions of… it helps. It helps a great deal, and it helps she has the old rules to point to as to why, no, they cannot remove from the chamber the person who most helps her feel calm.

Even if some people comment this way or that on the matter.

Percy doesn’t at least. Cass isn’t even entirely sure he’s noticed - or, if he has, whatever guilt or lack thereof he feels at what he did to Desmond seems to keep him from commenting himself.

Or perhaps he just doesn’t care to. He’s left Whitestone in her care, despite all she’s done. For some reason he trusts her judgement.

(She’s not sure it’s wise of him. She spent years under the Briarwoods’ thumbs after all, came to trust them inasmuch as she could trust anyone under the circumstances and to this day she’s not sure how much of that is time, or proximity, or magical charms.)

(She’s not entirely sure it matters - even when Charmed one still has some semblance of free will beneath the orders given; how cruel one is, how disloyal - in the end it comes from the cracks and seeds in one’s own heart, does it not? Charms thrive on weakness, on people bowing or being bowed to another’s will. And for that to happen, there must be something that can bend - something that is, or has been, or can be broken.)

(Percy thinks himself broken after all that happened. That much is obvious. From what he inflicted on Desmond, Cassandra doesn’t even entirely think he’s wrong.)

(Cass wonders how he can think she escaped it unscathed if he didn’t - being younger, being  _ more resilient _ doesn’t make one stronger. It just makes it easier to reshape one into something else.)

(It had not entirely been a lie when she had denied one name to take another. It had not been a lie to deny the new name and reclaim the old, either. Both were truths of a kind - both were truths she had to tell, whether they were true or false.)

* * *

“Lady Cassandra?”

She looks up from paperwork immediately, blinking at him and he gestures to the door.

“Your two o’clock is here.”

She lets out a long breath, draws one in, her shoulders relaxing before returning to strict posture as she sets down her pen.

“Thank you, Desmond,” she says. “Could you see about some tea?”

* * *

Desmond doesn’t know why, entirely, Lady Cassandra has made him of all people her manservant. He hadn’t even realised that was a position required to serve the ruling Lady of Whitestone; when offered the job he’d been too stunned to respond with much more than stuttering at first.

He suspects - has suspected since he’d regained enough composure to think, really - that this is an apology for her brother. A maimed carriageboy is little use to anyone; it’s hard to hold reins if you’re missing half your fingers, hard to wrest buckles and harnesses into place or properly plait the manes and tails of the horses for tidiness or with ribbons.

Cassandra does her own hair every day, only calling a maid to help for formal dinners, and the most fiddly help he has to provide is preparing the tea-tray or helping with tricky necklace clasps.

(He’s got quite good, if he does say so himself.)

He has no training for half of what he’s asked to do. Cassandra doesn’t seem to mind. From what he’s seen, Cassandra has no training for what she’s been asked to do either, just observation and the etiquette training of a childhood long lost to grief and imprisonment. She knows what’s expected of her but not how to do it all.

(She fears too. He wasn’t sure why at first, would have remained unsure but that he’s at her side more often than not: he hears what she says to Yennen, her fears and her worries, her admissions of guilt, her belief that she is no fit ruler regardless of what her brother might say.)

(Her brother, she says to Desmond one evening, is running from responsibility, fears himself and his mistakes too much to permit himself to rule, and has instead saddled her with it all. It is perhaps one of the only times he can recall her sounding  _ bitter.) _

(She never mentions it again. He chooses to keep it to himself that he ever heard it. He hardly needs another reason to dislike Percival de Rolo.)

Somehow they manage. They muddle their way through learning their tasks, muddle their way through each meeting and each job they must fulfil, muddle their way through each and every day. Cassandra rarely offers corrections, instead tending towards gentle suggestions - asking for tea before meetings, reminding when there’s letters to be sent, asking what meetings they have of a day.

He’s not even sure some of them are corrections; he thinks she might just ask him to fetch tea or send letters out of politeness, ask what meetings there are for her own peace of mind rather than expecting a litany each day.

He doesn’t have any help he can easily offer Cassandra. It’s a small unfairness he wishes he knew how to make even - she’s tried to make amends for her brother’s actions as much as her own, her continued help is unexpected.

So he simply stays at her side, finds ways to serve and to help. Offers tea, fetches papers, keeps her inkwell topped up. Offers her a hand when needed, his few fingers steadying at her back when she almost stumbles. Tasks that aren’t really his purview, but ones he keeps to nonetheless. 

He stays during most meetings too. When her eyes start to glaze over he moves into her sightline, handing her new paperwork or tidying the sideboard. Sometimes, if a meeting goes badly, he’ll reschedule the next one to give them both a breather. 

(When her breathing goes… he doesn’t know how to describe it but  _ wrong, _ not hitching but shallow, not fast but uncomfortable. When she reaches trembling hands to touch the spot below her collarbone he’s quite sure bears an arrow-scar. Those times he pours her water, sometimes tea. Sometimes, if the meeting is over, he pours something stronger.)

(Sometimes, she makes him sit and have a drink as well.)

* * *

“Cassandra?” Percival de Rolo’s head pokes around the door, then pauses. “Oh.”

“Thank you, Desmond,” Cassandra says, pulling her cup of tea closer. “Why don’t you fetch yourself a late lunch? You’ve earned a break I think.”

Desmond sets down the teapot, fingers fleeting on her shoulder as he moves past, and goes. 

“I’ll be mother,” Cassandra says as Desmond leaves, gesturing her brother to a seat and pouring him tea. “Now-”

* * *

Cassandra never asks about his hand. Desmond never asks about her breathing. They have work to do and try to keep one another on track.

Besides, some things need not be spoken of to be understood.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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